“Former GOP Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi can be added to the list of Republicans who seem to be on board with raising the tax rates on the country’s wealthiest as part of a deal to avoid going over the fiscal cliff.”

“South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has whittled down the list of people she is considering for Jim DeMint’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat to five people, a Republican close to the governor told CNN on Tuesday.

Her final choices for the seat are Rep. Tim Scott, Rep. Trey Gowdy, former state Attorney General Henry McMaster, former South Carolina First Lady Jenny Sanford and Catherine Templeton, a conservative attorney chosen by Haley to head the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.”

“Protesters speaking out against right-to-work laws blanketed the grounds around the Michigan state Capitol Tuesday morning, as the state’s legislature prepared to give final approval to laws which could seriously wound local organized labor.”

“In order for an ambitious budget deal to emerge, an awkward conversation must take place. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) needs to tell President Obama: ‘I can give some on rates for the wealthy, but I need cover on serious, structural cuts in entitlement programs.’ The call would be Boehner’s. But the groundwork for that conversation must be laid by the president. And Obama has been actively making it harder for Boehner to cry uncle.”

“The trouble with a newspaper column lies in the word limit. Last week, I wrote about some of Susan Rice’s diplomatic misadventures in Africa during her years in the Clinton administration: Rwanda, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo. But there wasn’t enough space to get to them all. And Sierra Leone deserves a column of its own.”

“Since the election, PresidentObama has focused the debate about the fiscal cliff on taxes. This tactical political positioning is putting at risk the strategic objective of a pro-growth budget package to reduce U.S. debt. Unless the president pushes to slow the growth of spending, he will fail to strike a deal, undermine U.S. growth prospects and ultimately erode America’s safety-net programs. The country’s global standing would falter, too, because the president would not have led in demonstrating America’s ‘governability.’”